Day of the Grasshopper Looms

Farmers and ranchers across the West are bracing for a grasshopper infestation that could devastate millions of acres of crops and land used for grazing. Over the coming weeks, federal officials say, grasshoppers will likely hatch in bigger numbers than any year since 1985. Hungry swarms caused hundreds of millions of dollars in damage that year when they devoured corn, barley, alfalfa, beets—even fence posts and the paint off the sides of barns. A federal survey of 17 states taken last fall found critically high numbers of adult grasshoppers in parts of Idaho, Montana, Nebraska, South Dakota and Wyoming. Each mature female lays hundreds of eggs. So "the population could be very, very high this year," said Charles Brown, who manages grasshopper suppression for the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Ryan Fieldgrove is dreading the influx. A rancher near Buffalo, Wyo., Mr. Fieldgrove was enjoying a banner year last summer when, seemingly out of nowhere, crawling carpets of hoppers marched onto his rangeland—a harbinger of this year's infestation. In three weeks, they had eaten every blade of tender, nutritious grass on his 10,000 acres. They also ate his wife's lilac bushes. "They took it all," Mr. Fieldgrove said...more